masters has made no end o' money; how
much father doesn't know, but in course
th' Union does; and, as is natural, they want
their share o' th' profits, now that food is
getting dear; and th' Union says they'll not
be doing their duty if they don't make the
masters give 'em their share. But masters
has getten th' upper hand somehow; and
I 'm feared they'll keep it now and evermore.
It's like th' great battle o' Armageddon,
the way they keep on, grinning and
fighting each other, till even while they
fight, they are picked off into the pit"

Just then, Nicholas Higgins came in. He
caught his daughter's last words.

"Ay! and I'll fight on too; and I'll get
it this time. It will not take long for to make
'em give in, for they've getten a pretty lot o
orders, all under contract; and they'll soon
find out they'd better give us our five per
cent, than lose the profit they'll gain; Iet
alone the fine for not fulfilling the contract.
Aha, my masters! I know who'll win."

Margaret fancied from his manner that he
must have been drinking, not so much from
what he said, as from the excited way in
which he spoke; and she was rather
confirmed in this idea by the evident anxiety
Bessy showed to hasten her departure. Bessy
said to her,—
"The twenty-first that's Thursday week.
I may come and see yo dressed for Thornton's,
I reckon. What time is yo'r dinner?"

Before Margaret could answer, Higgins
broke out,

Thornton's! Ar't going to dine at
Thornton's? Ask him to give yo a bumper
to the success of his orders. By th' twenty-
first, I reckon, he'll be pottered in his brains
how to get them done in time. Tell him
there's seven hundred'll come marching into
Marlborough Mills the morning after he
gives the five per cent, and will help him
through his contract in no time.—You'll have
'em all there. My master, Hamper. He's
one o' th' oud-fashioned sort. Ne'er meets a
man bout an oath or a curse; I should think
he were going to die if he spoke me civil; but
arter all, his bark's waur than his bite, and
yo may tell him one o' his turn-outs said so,
if you like. Eh! but yo'll have a lot of
prize millowners at Thornton's! I should
like to get speech o' them when they 're a
bit inclined to sit still after dinner, and could
na run for th' life on 'em. I 'd tell 'em my
mind. I 'd speak up again the hard way
they 're driving on us!"

"Good-bye!" said Margaret, hastily.
"Good-bye, Bessy! I shall look to see you
on the twenty-first, if you're well enough.

The medicines and treatment which Dr.
Donaldson had ordered for Mrs. Hale did her
so much good at first that not only she herself
but Margaret, began to hope that he
might have been mistaken, and that she
could recover permanently. As for Mr.
Hale, although he had never had an idea of
the serious nature of their apprehensions, he
triumphed over their fears with an evident
relief, which proved how much his glimpse
into the nature of them had affected him.
Only Dixon croaked for ever into Margaret's
ear. However, Margaret defied the raven,
and would hope.

They needed this gleam of brightness indoors,
for out-of-doors, even to their uninstructed
eyes, there was a gloomy brooding
appearance of discontent. Mr. Hale had his
own acquintances among the working men,
and was depressed with their earnestly-told
tales of suffering and long-endurance. They
would have scorned to speak of what they
had to bear to any one who might, from his
position, have understood it without their
words. But here was this man, from a distant
county, who was perplexed by the workings
of the system he was thrown amongst,
and each was eager to make him a judge, and
to bring witness of his own causes for irritation.
Then Mr. Hale brought all his budget
of grievances, and laid it before Mr. Thornton,
for him, with his experience as a master, to
arrange them, and explain their origin;
which he always did, on sound economical
principles, showing that as trade was
conducted there must always be a waxing and
waning of commercial prosperity; and that
in the waning of a certain number of masters,
as well as of men, must go down into ruin,
and be no more seen among the ranks of the
happy and prosperous. He spoke as if this
consequence was so entirely logical, that
neither employers nor employed had any
right to complain if it became their fate:
the employer to turn aside from the race he
could no longer run, with a bitter sense of
incompetency and failure—wounded in the
struggle—trampled down by his fellows in
their haste to get rich—slighted where he once
was honoured—humbly asking for instead of
bestowing employment with a lordly hand.
Of course, speaking so of the fate that, as a
master, might be his own in the fluctuations
of commerce, he was not likely to have more
sympathy with that of the workmen, who
were passed by in the swift merciless improvement
or alteration; who would fain lie down
and quietly die out of the world that needed
them not, but felt as if they could never rest
in their graves for the clinging cries of the
beloved and helpless they would leave behind;
who envied the power of the wild bird, that
can feed her young with her very heart's
blood. Margaret's whole soul rose up against
him as he reasoned this way—as if
commerce were everything, and humanity nothing.
She could hardly thank him for the individual
kindness which brought him that very
evening to offer her—for the delicacy which
made him understand that he must offer her
privately—every convenience for illness that
his own wealth or his mother's foresight had
caused them to accumulate in their household,
and which, as he learnt from Dr, Donaldson,